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The
Columbus Dispatch...
Brown draws fire from
some environmentalists
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Some environmentalists were unhappy with Sen. Sherrod Brown after he
urged President Barack Obama last week to consider the economic harm to
major industries before issuing regulations to control so-called
greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming.
By doing so, the Ohio Democrat seemed to move even closer to the
position held by former Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich, that the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should consider the economic
damage of anti-pollution regulations.
“For a long time, Sen. Brown has tried to walk a tightrope on this
issue,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a
Washington organization that champions tough environmental laws. “It’s
unfortunate that he seems to have fallen off - and landed in former
Sen. Voinovich’s lap.”
Franz Matzner, climate and air legislative director for the Natural
Resources Defense Council in Washington, said, “There were some good
things in the letter, and there are things we strongly disagree with in
the letter.”
Brown insisted that “my position hasn’t changed at all. I want us to
find a way to reduce carbon emissions, and we have to do it in a way
that doesn’t cost jobs.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the 1970 Clean Air Act
permits the EPA to impose new regulations to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases, generated in large part by industry and coal-fired
utility power plants.
Teresa McHugh, the Midwest regional representative for the Sierra Club,
said Brown’s letter “focuses on one piece of environmental regulation,”
and that she did not “believe the letter places Sen. Brown in the same
position that Sen. Voinovich was in.”
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
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